So I had this visuals idea, and figured it would pair well with my long standing belief that the four attunements should have a more specialized function. The basic idea is that ANet seems to have a thing for forms, what with the new Reaper and Celestial forms for Necromancer and Druid respectively. Likely an idea such as this would not be coming any time soon, but could be implemented in the next specialization roll-out.
Enter the Elemental!
The basic idea is an F5 ability which acts as an on/off switch for the Elemental forms. It could be toggled into and out of at will (does NOT act as a weapon switch) granting access to powerful Elemental specific skills. I would suggest that it not be tied to another new resource.
The premise then is that hitting F5 changes your Attunements into Elemental forms. The skills for each attunement are not bound to any weapon set, so a Staff wielder would have the same 1-5 skills as a D/D user when in an Elemental form.
Visually, each form would totally alter the player’s avatar to make it look like the Elementalist is becoming one with the elements themselves. In Fire for example, the PC could resemble the Human Torch, Water could be akin to Iceman from the X-Men or Glacius from Killer Instinct, and similar treatments for Earth and Air.
The point of the new forms would be to introduce specific functionality to the Attunements. Fire would be all about PBAOE with lots of Burning, Air would be spike single target with lots of Vulnerability, Water solely Chill and healing, and Earth would only have hard CC and defense skills. Water and Earth would include no direct damage on any skills, instead incorporating only condition damage from Chill and/or Earth bleeds.
While I recognize that this would mean designing 20 new skills, the upside is that these skills would be the same across any number of builds and weapon sets, and so easy to balance. It also takes advantage of existing attunement mechanics, offers an alternative to weapon swapping, and if movement and defensive skills are properly implemented, shore up several weaknesses of certain builds and weapons without having to completely re-design the profession from the ground up.
Plus it would look frikkin cool.
